Basically, everyone seems to be trying a story where the team are kids, and I really like this idea! I'd love to see how they all interacted that age, and I keep wondering how the moments in the show might be different. I wanted to try it myself, but didn't want to go with the typical, so I've tried to do something a bit different. All of the team are part of a children's home that Gibbs and Jenny run, and our story begins with season 3, where we have just lost Kate...

Chapter One: It Shouldn't Have Been This Way

The dark hair no longer clung to the sides of her face. Perhaps that was what upset him the most. She was forever brushing her hair out of her face, complaining that it needed cutting back again only a day after she'd had her chocolate tresses trimmed. It was the layers, she'd complain, the layers not only framed her face, they constricted it. The feather-light hair would brush against her cheeks, falling on her eyelashes at the slightest hint of a breeze. He was too used to seeing her brush her hair back over her shoulder as she leaned over her schoolbooks, or tuck it behind her ears during dinner, or groan in outrage before the mirror every morning before school trying to straighten it to the point where she felt it was acceptable to go into public with.

It hung back now of it own accord. As her head lay back all of her hair fell with it, landing beneath her in a mocha halo. No hands were needed to brush it out of her way, no hair band was needed to scrap it out of her face. Never again would this hair interrupt her reading, her drawing, her daily movements. He reached out a hand, touching the tresses with trembling fingers. Yes, they were still soft, still sweetly smelling of her floral shampoo too, no doubt.

If only the rest of her body had retained such similarity.

It didn't seem right that this unmoving form before him was Caitlyn Todd. If it wasn't for the trademark hair, he'd hardly believe it. Her skin was too pale, something that didn't suit her. She was always seen with the tiniest hint of a suntan, usually because of the endless hours she spent in the garden with her sketchpad, drawing the scenery, the flowers, the other children. For the same reason, it seemed ridiculous that her skin was this cold. She was perhaps one of the most warm-hearted people whom he'd ever encountered, especially considering her background.

And this still? He'd never seen her this way. Even when she was concentrating on the stokes of her sketching utensils, she was never completely still. Had he ever seen her unmoving before? No, he realised. When drawing, her wrist would change position so frequently, knowing the exact angle she would need for every shade, ever tone, every texture. When reading, her toes would curl and uncurl casually as they hung from the side of the couch. When sleeping, her nose would twitch and she would toss and turn, side to side.

It shouldn't have been this way.

"Oh, Caitlyn," he sighed, running his hands over that soft hair for the last time. "I am so sorry."

With a heavy heart, Dr. Mallard closed his eyes and turned from the teen's body, wishing himself able to remember her in a way that no longer had jagged scars across her wrists, her pale skin marred with blood even though the doctors at the hospital had cleaned it from her skin long before her arrived. He made his way out of the morgue, nodding to the doctor waiting just outside to signal that he was done, and with that, he made his way back to those who were waiting for him.

It shouldn't have been this way.

Leroy Jethro Gibbs stared at the photograph before him. He kept photographs, though rarely did he look at them. As he stared at the glossy print now, it seemed ridiculous that he would keep such a memorable moment away in a drawer, and a locked drawer, at that. This day was sunny, clear skies and smiles all round. This was a day that should be remembered and cherished, as today would not be. A nine-year-old Caitlyn, or Kate, as they all knew her, stared back up at him from the photograph. He remembered this as the first day she had smiled, two weeks after she had come to them at the Summerville Children's Home in downtown DC.

Like many others, Kate's past was too filled with pain for someone so young. Her mother and father had been tragically killed in a hold up in a bank, both heroes who tried to help others in the crisis who had ultimately paid the price for their courage. Kate had been five years at the time. The next year of her life was spent living at her grandparents house in northern Virginia alongside her four elder brothers and one elder sister. While two of her elder siblings went on to colleges at opposite ends of the country, her other three siblings remained with their grandparents with her, until her grandmother died. Their grandfather lived for only one year following that.

Now at seven years old, and beginning to understand that life was perhaps the cruellest thing she had been granted, she spent the next few years lost in the system of social services, thrown backwards and forwards between foster families while the courts could decide where to send them. There were no more relatives, no family friends who could take in four children, and with the elder two siblings studying medicine and science, they could not spare any time to take care of their siblings. So the Todd children were separated and placed into the Summerville Children's Home, after two years of struggle and movement. At first, the siblings kept to themselves, and none more so than young Katie, but eventually they began to open up more to the other children.

On the afternoon that this photograph had been taken had been the first time that Kate had come out of the shell that she had retreated into four years before. They had ensured that all the children went into the back yard and they had an afternoon of summer games, encouraging all of them to include the four newcomers. It had taken a few hours, but eventually even Kate was running around and laughing with the other children. This photograph showed the one child, in particular, that Kate had bonded with: ten-year-old Tony DiNozzo. Unlike many of the other children, who had arrived at Summerville too young to remember the circumstances, Tony understood what it was like to have nothing but bad memories to look back on.

But this happiness faded again. Kate's siblings gradually began to fade into new lives. First, Jacob had been adopted by a family in Virginia. Next, Veronica had been adopted by a childless couple in New York. Around the same time that Jacob's new family moved to California, Shaun was adopted and moved down to New Orleans. That just left Kate and Daniel at Summerville until a couple from DC had adopted Daniel. It wasn't as bad as the others, because Daniel was closest to Kate in age, and the family who adopted him ensured that the two siblings saw each other regularly, until a car accident had separated them forever. Daniel's adopted mother had survived the accident, but her husband and Daniel had died instantly.

Kate had become one of the ones who stayed. There were several of them now; the ones who couldn't, or never would, be adopted. Kate was one of them. Tony was another. These children stuck together, raised each other, treated Gibbs and Jenny, the owners of Summerville, as their own parents in the absence of their own. Their own family which they knew was good, because they had built it themselves.

Until now, it seemed.

Two knocks sounded on the office door, and he placed the photograph down on the desk, shoving it out of sight beneath some paperwork. "Come in," he said, covering up the gruffness of his voice as much as he could.

The door opened to reveal two teenage boys, the elder of whom was the sixteen-year-old form of the boy in the photograph. He was no longer the floppy-haired, mischievous youngster that he had grown into quickly after settling at Summerville. Now, he stood at almost six feet, towering over all the others, with the exception of Gibbs himself. His hair was always intently crafted into what he called 'perfection' and others called 'a mess'. True, the mischief was still there, but not right now. Now, his eyes were cold, they were broken and longing. There was no such similarity on the younger teen's face. Timothy McGee stood beside Tony, cowering beneath him at aged fourteen, only because he was too young to have reached his inevitable growth spurt yet. While Tony was attempting to step up past the grieving, Tim clearly wasn't. At least, that's what the stains on his face told him.

Tony stepped forward, clearing his throat. "We, uh….we found Kate's diary, boss."

"Thought it might help," Tim added, sounding much younger than he was.

The elder boy held out a plain black notebook. It had bounds of coloured hair scrunchies holding it closed as opposed to the more traditional lock. Gibbs took it, holding it in his hands as he stared at it. He touched the home-made bindings, but he didn't remove them. Instead he placed the diary atop the folder that hid the photograph. He would leave that to Dr. Mallard, their resident health practitioner and child psychologist. He moved around the desk to stand before the two boys, and only then, did he notice what should have alerted his attention first.

"Tony, you're soaking wet."

Tony looked up at him, almost confused until he looked back down at himself. He nodded slowly. "When I saw her like that, I had to get out of there…it was raining…"

"Go put some dry clothes on," Gibbs instructed softly. Tony nodded numbly, as Gibbs led them out of the office. He closed the door behind them. "I want you to both get some warm clothes on and meet me downstairs in the kitchen, okay? Stay away from Kate's room for a while."

Without waiting for an answer, he strode down the hall, leaving the two boys in his wake. Tim looked in confusion to the elder boy. "Why can't we go near her room?"

"He has to find the knife," Tony mumbled distractedly.

Tim frowned. "What knife?"

Tony looked down at the ground, leaning against the wall. "Didn't you see her?" he asked.

He shook his head. "After I heard, Jenny kept as many of us from seeing it as possible," he said.

"She cut her wrists," Tony said to him, keeping his voice down just in case any of the younger ones were lingering nearby and listening in.

"So, she didn't…she didn't suffer long?" he asked hesitantly.

"Suffer?!" Tony repeated, turning to face him with a strangely wild look in his eyes. "Of course she suffered, McGee!" he used his surname, something that he usually did as a teasing, but this wasn't a tease. "Unless you do something like that just right, it can take ages for things to end! Do you realise that every time we knocked on her door, asking if she wanted to watch a movie and she was apparently sleeping and couldn't answer, she was probably slowly bleeding to death on her bedroom floor!"

"Tony, please," Tim whispered, in an attempt to stall the rising yell that was directed at him.

Tony stopped shouting, breathing heavily as he forced himself to calm down. "I'm sorry, kid," Tony murmured afterwards, leaning against the wall and returning his gaze back to the ground.

"She was happy, right?" Tim asked after a moment. "I thought she liked it here."

"She was content," Gibbs whispered, as he walked back past them. "She wasn't happy."

And at the end of the day, they realised, how many of them were truly happy with what had happened to them before they arrived here?

Tony pulled on his clean shirt over his head, throwing a sweater on as well. He knew what he was like when it came to getting sick, and he didn't want to tempt fate. He didn't remember arriving here clearly, but he remembered waking up in the room that had become his permanent bedroom and having Jenny sitting at his bedside, helping him drink from a glass of water. He'd been six years old, and for a while he hadn't questioned anything. He'd missed the feeling of having somebody take care of him, so he had clung to the kind woman who had eased him through his coughing fits and warmed him when he shivered.

The door to Kate's bedroom, right beside his own, was closed, but he still shuddered when he walked past it. He knew that Gibbs was inside. He knew what Gibbs was looking for. He stopped for a moment when he saw three drops of blood littering the carpet beneath his feet. They were smeared now from the amount of times that people had walked over them…first Gibbs, then Dr. Mallard, then the paramedics…the rush of people who had done all they could to save her but then realised that ultimately, she was too far gone. He could remember his own terror as Abby had picked Kate's bedroom door lock, just as she always did whenever Kate might be upset and was refusing to talk to anybody, and then seen the horror inside Kate's bedroom. He could remember hearing the sound of Abby screaming in the bedroom doorway.

He hoped he never heard that scream again.

He carried on walking, not stopping or looking back until he reached Abby's bedroom door. It was ajar slightly, so he stuck his head around the door, knocking lightly on the door was he did so. "Abby?" he asked, as he stepped inside.

And then he heard that strangest sound.

Laughter?

"Abby?" he questioned again, before seeing her at her vanity table.

She had her head in her hands, looking down, but he could see in her reflection that she wasn't herself. Her face was paler than usual (which was pale, considering the fourteen year old had recently taken to the Gothic trademarks), and her eyes were red. She wore no make up, and her black hair was falling over her shoulders. She looked five years old again. She looked like she had done when one of the older girls first put her hair in pigtails for her. He didn't think he'd ever seen her without pigtails since then. She always kept photographs pinned around her mirror, smiles and laughter surrounding her every morning as she got ready for school, but one of them was taken down, leaving a deep purple shade on the wall in it's absence. He'd almost forgotten that these walls were purple with the amount of posters she'd covered them in. The photo, he realised from process of elimination, would have been one of her and Kate.

And yes, she was laughing.

She turned, looking at him with a big smile. "Hey, Tony."

"You okay?" he asked her, as he closed the bedroom door behind him.

"I will be," she announced brightly, "as soon as I tie up my pigtails."

"You're weird," he noted, as he stood behind her, watching as she effortlessly scooped her hair up and tied it in place. "Weirder than Gibbs."

She frowned. "How so?"

"He was being nice."

She cocked her head to one side. "Gibbs is always nice."

"To you, maybe," he nodded. "To me…growls at, smacks on the head."

"Which makes you feel loved and wanted," Abby smiled at him.

"Yeah," he admitted softly.

In the reflection of the glass they stared at each other for the longest time, and then it happened. Abby's sniffle started it, and then she launched herself into Tony's arms, almost too quickly for him to react. But he did. He recovered quickly because he knew what her hugs were like. He knew that she relied on hugs a lot more than some of the children here did. Most of them shied away from others altogether, content with this newfound family but not comfortable enough to embrace them with open arms.

Abby was different, however. She had come to Summerville at a year old, a bright young baby with shining eyes and a beautiful smile, at least, that's what the photographs told him. Her parents were both very young when they had their darling daughter Abigail, and while they had dreams for the future of their little girl, they had found it harder to cope with the little baby than they originally thought. He didn't know the exact cause, but some kind of accident had left both her parents deaf and shortly after that, Abby had arrived at Summerville. He knew that both her parents loved her, and that she saw them regularly, but when she was that young her parents had expressed their concerns to Gibbs, a close friend, and admitted the guilt that some nights she was left unattended to because they couldn't hear her crying.

Abby had been here for two years when Tony had arrived, and he remembered that he had bonded with the little toddler more easily than he had with any of the other children. Gibbs would not allow her to be adopted, as there was still the hope that one day her parents would take her home again, but he knew that Abby had lost hope of that years ago. Instead, she adopted them as her family. In her mind, Gibbs was her father, Jenny was her mother, and Tony was her big brother. And as the years went by and Tony, himself, was never adopted, he was more than happy to step into the role she'd created for him.

"Tony, I'm gonna miss her," she said to him tearfully, as she held him so tight that it hurt.

He didn't let go however, instead, he tried to reciprocate the force of her hold. "Me too."

Okay, so that's the start of it. Other chapters will be longer (you know me) I just wanted to get the ball rolling. Tell me what you think! We will be seeing all the team dynamics in this...tiva, mcabby, jibbs, the what could have been with Tony and Kate, as the story progresses there'll be Jeanne, and Deep Six and Hollis...and Michael and Vance? It's a bit later, but I plan on really following the show with this story. Honestly tell me what you think, I love your guys reviews :D

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